How can knowledge generated by the PISA survey be converted into usable information for policy-makers? In this excerpt, we analyze how the OECD developed PISA as a credible and useful tool for the exercise of government power and/or government scrutiny. Read more ...

Our first findings show the principal differences between scientific knowledge production and its political usage. We see a reciprocal discontent between the scientific advisors or experts and the advised politicians: both of them blame the other side with not having enough knowledge to make scientific advising more effective. Read more ...

In Europe, information and expertise are now both more widely distributed and more readily accessible than ever before. At the same time, expectations of transparency and public accountability have increased. In many ways, knowledge is coming to play a new role in policy: we can now distinguish ’post-bureaucratic’ from conventional ’bureaucratic’ regimes and show that each presupposes a specific kind of knowledge and a specific way of using it. While bureaucratic modes of governance require ‘established’ bodies of knowledge to be translated into ‘vertical’ regulations; post-bureaucratic modes of governance consist rather in attempting to turn actors’ autonomy and reflexivity into a means of governing.